Comment by Papazsazsa
11 hours ago
For the sake of argument, why wouldn't this also extend to my written 'voice'?
(I'm talking philosophically by the way, not legally)
For someone like Cormac McCarthy, whose sparse punctuation, biblical cadences, and apocalyptic imagery create an unmistakable "voice," the argument seems strong. His style is as identifiable as vocal timbre e.g. readers recognize McCarthy prose instantly, just as they'd recognize his speaking voice.
I guess philosophically speaking, it is pretty rare for an individual to develop a written "voice"/style distinct enough to warrant this kind of protection. Not least because only very few people would ever be able to mistake a "fake" of your written style for the real thing (because very few would be familiar with your style in the first place) and even if this happened, the likely consequences are almost always negligible. It's simply an edge case and any solution to it that I can think of would produce more problems than it solves.
Your likeness on the other hand is pretty unique for most people in the world and the technological ability to produce convincing and arbitrary copies of it has very obvious and frightful consequences. Resolving this problem is of tremendous importance for social cohesion.